Lynne Stewart probably believes she has put another one over on the American government after receiving a mere 28 months for facilitating the activities of terrorists. But the fact is, her career as a “civil rights” attorney has, if anything, proven Ms. Stewart to be far more than an attorney for bombers, killers, and terrorists. Lynne Stewart is a con artist of epic proportions, hurling bunkum at her leftist colleagues and the American public like a carny barker all the while laughing up her sleeve at the stupidity and gullibility of ordinary people.

The defense maintained that the charges against Stewart and her codefendants were an assault on free speech and argued that Stewart enjoyed a lawyer-client privilege. They further argued that the George W. Bush administration hyped evidence against the defendants. Stewart and her defense knew what would play on campuses and in leftist forums across the country. Her website billed the trial as a manifestation of an Orwellian fear that, in the wake of 9-11 and armed with provisions of the Patriot Act, the U.S. Department of Justice was going to criminalize political dissent.

And yet, here’s a quote from Stewart that would seem to make her a liar about her love of free speech:

She described her position in an interview as “a strange amalgam of old-line things and new-line things. I don’t have any problem with Mao or Stalin or the Vietnamese leaders or certainly Fidel locking up people they see as dangerous. Because so often, dissidence has been used by the greater powers to undermine a people’s revolution. The CIA pays a thousand people and cuts them loose, and they will undermine any revolution in the name of freedom of speech.”

For the record, Mao murdered between 20 and 60 million of his own countrymen whose only crime was dissenting from his ruthless dictatorship. And the fact that Castro routinely locks up dissenters doesn’t seem to bother her although her perspective might change a bit after she spends a year or so in the slammer.

Some of the evidence against her reveals a breathtaking contempt for her own word, freely given, not to pass messages from the blind Sheik to his followers:

Stewart and her coconspirators flouted their agreement with the Justice Department and helped the sheikh circumvent the communications ban. According to government recordings of their prison visits, Yousry, who also served as an adjunct lecturer in Middle East studies at York College of the City University of New York, conveyed messages to and from the sheikh while Stewart created what the prosecution called “covering noises.” On some surveillance videos, Stewart could be seen shaking a water jar or tapping on the table while Yousry and the sheikh exchanged communications that were then later disseminated to the sheikh’s followers via the former paralegal. The prosecutor argued, citing a letter written by the U.S. attorney’s office to Stewart after she delivered the message to Reuters, that it was not in the sheikh’s legal rights “to pass messages which, simply put, can get people killed and buildings blown up.” They argued that the case was equivalent to a “jail break,” in which the defendants extracted Abdel Rahman from prison, “not literally, of course, [but] figuratively, in order to make him available to other terrorists.”

One of the most incendiary communications was a message Stewart herself gave to the Reuters news service in June 2000 in which the sheikh announced his withdrawal of support for a cease-fire between the Egyptian Islamic Group and the Egyptian government. The truce had been in place since 1997, just after his followers in Egypt had opened fire on tourists at the Temple of Hatshepsut in Luxor, killing 58 foreigners and 4 Egyptians. Subsequently, high-casualty Islamist terrorism resumed in Egypt on October 7, 2004, with a series of bombings that killed 34 in and around the Egyptian Sinai resort of Taba. On July 23, 2005, three bombs exploded in the Red Sea resort of Sharm el-Sheikh, killing at least 64.

The sentencing judge who handed down the 28 months sentence pointed out, in obvious ignorance of the facts, that there was no evidence anyone had been harmed by her actions. This is after the same judge said basically that she’s no better than a terrorist:

But Judge Koeltl said there had been â€œan irreducible core of extraordinarily severe criminal conductâ€ in her actions on behalf of the client, Sheik Omar Abdel Rahman, a blind fundamentalist Islamic cleric who is serving a life sentence for plotting to bomb New York City landmarks. Ms. Stewart was convicted on Feb. 10, 2005, of conspiring to provide material aid to terrorism by smuggling the sheikâ€™s messages encouraging violence by his militant followers in Egypt.

So why the light sentence?

While agreeing that Ms. Stewart had flouted the law and deceived the government by breaking prison rules to publicize the sheikâ€™s messages, Judge Koeltl broadly rejected the prosecutorsâ€™ portrayal of her as a serial liar and terrorist conspirator who would be a danger to society if she remained free.

Instead, he focused on her past service as a lawyer. â€œShe has represented the poor, the disadvantaged and the unpopular,â€ Judge Koeltl said, adding that Ms. Stewart had demonstrated â€œenormous skill and dedicationâ€ in her legal work and earned little money from it.

* The 1981 robbery of a Brinks truck that killed two policemen and a guard carried out by radical leftists. The killer’s defense? Stewart and her colleagues described the prosecution as “an effort by the government to prosecute political activists who rob from the rich in order to give to the poor.” To this day, several of the defendants refuse to say they did anything wrong or apologize for the murders. One of the perpetrators, Susan Rosenberg, had her sentence commuted by Bill Clinton as he was leaving office.

* Defended Luc Levasseur of the United Freedom Front, a domestic terrorist group that bombed the US Capitol in 1983 as well as several other targets.

* Defended Sunni Ali, a member of the Black Liberation Army, a violent offshoot of the Black Panthers, who was accused of several bombings. The Fraternal Order of Police says the BLA is responsible for the murder of 13 police officers. Also participated in the Brinks robbery.

* Defended two recent cop killers.

Do we see a pattern? It seems that Stewart has a soft spot in her heart for cop killers. Now even cop killers deserve the best defense our system can give them. But her defense of these men always centers on the fact that they were acting in self defense given the known “brutality” of the police. And she asks the jury to dismiss her client’s actions on the grounds that they are fomenting revolution and are therefore exempt from “unjust laws.”

What is her attitude toward jihadists like the Shiek? The government caught Stewart’s true feelings on tape:

In May of 2000, according to the prosecution, tapes indicate that Yousry told the sheikh and Stewart that the Abu Sayyaf group had kidnapped tourists in the Philippines and was threatening to kill them if the sheikh and Ramzi Yousef were not released. Stewart commented, “Good for them,” although she said that while she believed that Abu Sayyaf would not succeed in winning Abdel Rahman’s release, its efforts were nonetheless “very, very crucial,” since the demand would raise his profile among jihadists. Even bin Laden, a self-professed admirer of the sheikh, had considered hijacking airplanes to free the sheikh and Yousef. In September 2000, the Al-Qaeda leader reiterated his threat to wage jihad on the sheikh’s behalf.

Stewart also endorsed the sheikh’s ghostwritten fatwa, calling for the murder of Jews and Americans. When Sattar told Stewart that Ramsey Clark had concerns about the fatwa, she responded, “Does he really think that the American government can completely put this man in an iron box and cut him off from the whole world?”

When asked about 9-11, Stewart told The New York Times that she thought the attacks were a predictable response to U.S. aggression. “I’m pretty inured to the notion that in a war or in an armed struggle, people die,” she said. “They’re in the wrong place; they’re in a nightclub in Israel; they’re at a stock market in London; they’re in the Algerian outbackâ€”whatever it is, people die.” Citing the U.S. use of a nuclear weapon against Hiroshima and the World War II firebombing of Dresden, she added, “So I have a lot of trouble figuring out why that is wrong, especially when people are sort of placed in a position of having no other way.”

Then, after thumbing her nose at the government for so long, when it comes time for her to face the consequences of her conscious and deliberate actions, she chickens out and throws herself on the mercy of the court like any common cowardly criminal:

In a brief statement to the judge before the sentence, Ms. Stewart, shaking and barely suppressing tears, refrained from political comment or discussion of her case, but noted that she would never be permitted to practice law again.

â€œThe end of my career is truly like a sword in my side,â€ she said. â€œI donâ€™t want to be in prison,â€ she pleaded. â€œPermit me to live in the world and live out my life, productively, lovingly, righteously.â€

Ms. Stewartâ€™s lawyers, citing her recent bout of breast cancer, had asked the judge not to give her any prison time.

The fact that she didn’t use her statement to further her goal of revolution only shows her to be the craven opportunist she has always been. This is a hero of the left? This God forsaken, broken down old side show barker elicits encomiums of praise and poetic tributes from radicals?

Almost as cowardly as Stewart was the judge who praised Stewart for her past work while releasing her on bail pending appeal because he believes that there is a chance that the verdict will actually be reversed.

Let’s hope the appeals court has a lot more gumption than this Clinton appointed judge. Otherwise, Stewart may yet walk out of court a free woman.

By: Rick Moran at 10:27 am

18 Responses to “A REAL (ANTI) AMERICAN”

1

SShiell Said:
10:52 am

Condemn her to live in the very world she praises - exile this “God forsaken, broken down old side show barker” to Iran. Let’s see how she takes to living among those she defends.

This is a perfect example of our courts not being equipped to deal with traitors or those conspiring with the enemy. Perhaps she should have been tried by the military tribunals…then we might have seen real justice.

3

Geek, Esq. Said:
12:14 pm

I find Stewart and her views repulsive. However, they aren’t germane to her sentencing.

I actually don’t have a problem with the 28 month sentence. The important thing is that she’s been convicted, disbarred, and repudiated.

After begging for mercy, terrorist supporting jihad lawyer Lynne Stewart recieved the light sentence of 28 months. A slap on the wrist for a traitorous moonbat.
Civil rights lawyer Lynne Stewart was sentenced this afternoon to 28 months in prison o…

6

Eddie Said:
2:02 pm

I’m just wondering whether your real problem is with the system of justice in America. Because it seems that you have a special direct line to the truth about guilt or innocence. But even more importantly, you seem to think that there should be no due process in this country, because whatever Ms. Stewart might be characterized, she was a defender of the rights of individuals whose rights are protected by the very Constitution that you seem not to be very comfortable with and are only too ready to discard.

Perhaps it is you that does not love America. You certainly would not have loved any of the Founders who believed that everyone should have their day in court.

But I guess for you, that’s just a technicality that gets in the way of true justice.

The NY Times calls Lynne Stewart a “radical defense lawyer.” Add two-faced to that. During her sentencing hearing was docile and quite scared:
In a brief statement to the judge before the sentence, Ms. Stewart, shaking and barely suppressin…

8

Sirius Familiaris Said:
2:56 pm

Eddie,

Iâ€™m just wondering whether your real problem is with the system of justice in America.

I don’t think Rick has a problem with our system of justice, but clearly he and many others, myself included, have a major problem with an officer of the court conspiring with convicted terrorists in order to kill more people. The blind shiek and his co-conspirators had a right to legal cousel, and Stewart had the right to defend him. No one, however, has the “right” to aid and abet foreign terrorists committed to killing Americans.

But even more importantly, you seem to think that there should be no due process in this country, because whatever Ms. Stewart might be characterized, she was a defender of the rights of individuals whose rights are protected by the very Constitution that you seem not to be very comfortable with and are only too ready to discard.

If you’re going make such an accusation, back it up with the appropriate citation, pal. Other than your impression that Rick “seems” to think due process takes a backseat to meting out punishment arbitrarily to an anti-American terrorist sympathizer, where exactly does he claim she never deserved her day in court? Personally, I think a short length of rope and a tall tree were in order for Stewart, but that’s me, not the author.

Perhaps it is you that does not love America.

If you’re trying to provoke an argument, you need to be less transparent. If you’re trying to defend Stewart, look up the history on her indictment, trial and conviction. Then come back here and tell us exactly how this person didn’t hate the United States and despise her fellow Americans.

9

Drewsmom Said:
3:16 pm

Ah, eddie, what a moonbat loon you are and Sirius nailed you for what you are.
Perhaps ramsay clark can vist ms. stewart in prison and they could get married and they could have conjual (sp) visits .. what a pair those two lovebirds would make.

Rick Moran does so in a post that, had I had the time today, I had planned to write.The fact that she didnâ€™t use her statement to further her goal of revolution only shows her to be the craven opportunist

U.S. lawyer gets 28 months jail for aiding terrorism By Matthew Verrinder A New York attorney convicted of aiding terrorism by helping an imprisoned Egyptian client smuggle messages to militant followers was sentenced on Monday to 28 months in prison….

Hmmm, wonder if this is the same Anonymous that keeps commenting on these threads…If so, you really should get educated at bit before you spout off.

I’m disgusted by the minimal justice imposed on Ms. Stewart. I can only assume that this occurred due to the judge, since common sense says otherwise… The evidence was obviously there and proved by a jury…so what is going on? Just another liberal judge advocating his/her position with respect to the â€œimperialismâ€ of America…

18

Shawn Said:
7:43 pm

“Who was it who said â€œI disagree with what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it.â€

Was that Thomas Jefferson? Patrick Henry? Some other founding father?

Commies.”

Actually, no one said that. It’s an invented quote of Voltaire’s.

Although you don’t seem to get that passing on messages to terrorists isn’t protected under “freedom of speech”. She’s allowed to say that she loves all of the actions of the totalitarian Left and Islamism, but we’re just as free to denounce her idiocy and disgusting opinion.